Smoke from oil stoves blows in the cold arctic air at the Baffinland Mary River mine site in northern Nunavut. The temporary camp on the site of one of the largest undeveloped iron ore deposits in the world gives workers protection from the harsh sub-zero temperatures while a more permanent “camp” is constructed nearby.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL

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Beat Reporting: Dakshana Bascaramurty, Globe and Mail, for coverage of the suburban communities surrounding Toronto; Tom Blackwell, National Post, for coverage of the health beat; Charlie Fidelman, Montreal Gazette, for coverage of the health beat.

Breaking News: Calgary Herald team for coverage of floods that swept across southern Alberta; Montreal La Presse team for coverage of the massive explosion caused by a runaway train in Lac-Megantic, Que.; Ottawa Citizen team for coverage of a collision between a double-decker city bus and a VIA passenger train that left six people dead.

Business: James Bagnall, Ottawa Citizen, for an investigation revealing how a building tradesman and accused fraudster was also a CSIS informant; Globe and Mail team for in-depth analysis of the rapid decline of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion from a global technology leader to a company struggling to stay alive; Bill Redekop, Winnipeg Free Press, for a two-part series on the rise and fall of an Internet pharmacy venture.

Columns: Luisa D’Amato, Waterloo Region Record, for columns on an inquest into the death of an inmate, plans for a local casino, and the shenanigans of school board trustees; Royson James, Toronto Star, for columns on violence within the city’s black community, the police shooting of a man on a city bus, and the challenge facing Toronto voters in the next mayoral election; Michele Ouimet, Montreal La Presse, for three columns on a proposed charter of values that deeply divided the province of Quebec.

Explanatory Work: John Allemang, Globe and Mail, for a piece exploring the pleasures, and the pleasurable pain, crossword puzzles have given to newspaper readers every day for a century; Claire Brownell, Windsor Star, for exposing just how much of her city belongs to the billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge; Amy Dempsey, Toronto Star, for using the case of a mentally ill man who killed a Toronto police sergeant with a stolen snowplow to explain what it takes, and what it means, for someone to be found neither guilty nor innocent; Wendy Gillis, Toronto Star, for a report breaking down the complex task of cleaning up the urban oil spill caused by the Lac-Mégantic train disaster.

Feature Photo: Tyler Anderson, National Post, for a photo of a fan being grabbed by security guards as he slides down a stadium wall beside a giant camera ad; Mark Blinch, Reuters, for a picture of a man and woman talking between a barrier that divided men’s and women’s prayer areas inside a mosque; Leah Rae Hennel, Calgary Herald, for a balletic image of a woman leaping over a huge street-corner puddle into the arms of her husband.

International: Mark MacKinnon and Marina Strauss, Globe and Mail, for a report exploring the misery and exploitation that brings clothes from sweatshops in Bangladesh to store shelves in Canada; Michele Ouimet and Agnes Gruda, Montreal La Presse, for an examination of Salafists, Islamist militants working to foment revolution and violence in Libya, Tunisia and Syria; Michelle Shephard, Tonda MacCharles, Andrew Livingstone and Laurent Prieur, Toronto Star, for an investigation into issues surrounding two Canadians who had been lured by Al Qaeda-inspired groups with the promise of jihad in Africa’s “Arc of Instability.”

Investigations: Adrian Humphreys, National Post, for a report exposing the attempts of a mysterious facilitator to deport long-term illegal immigrants to Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon; Karen Kleiss, Darcy Henton, Stephanie Coombs, Darren Francey and Paula Simons, Calgary Herald/Edmonton Journal, for an investigation spanning four years that produced stunning revelations about the deaths of children in Alberta’s foster care system; Vincent Larouche and David Santerre, Montreal La Presse, for uncovering a crime network that funnelled hundreds of Roma from Romania, as well as some impostors, into Canada.

Local Reporting: Dan Dakin, St. Catharines Standard, for a three-part investigative series on a failed private football school in Niagara; Ian Hitchen, Brandon Sun, for coverage of allegations that children in a close-knit Manitoba Old Order Mennonite community had been physically abused, some with a cattle prod; Grant LaFleche, St. Catharines Standard, for a series exploring the deaths of at least 126 workers during the building of the Welland Canal a century ago; New Brunswick Telegraph Journal team for reporting on the investigation into the slaying of prominent business executive Richard Oland.